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Friday, 1 August 2008

"Iconic Britain" Competition By Microsoft=Copyright Theft

Microsoft has launched an interesting competition called "Iconic Britain"; a nice idea which alas is wrongly executed. In a nutshell its allowed entrants to enter any work considered iconic; the entrant doesn't have to be the copyright holder. These images will be published on their web site and voted for. According to Microsoft, if an image makes it into the top 100, they will then find the copyright holder and ask for a license.

"Pro-Imaging" has an interesting write up on this competition and is campaigning for copyright infringements to be brought to Microsoft's attention.

Nikon who are a supporter of the competition have thankfully pulled out of supporting the competition following concerns by photographers.

I strongly urge photographers to look through the results when they are published and follow the suggestion made on Pro-Imaging.

Edmond Terakopian started as a news photographer in 1989. Having worked up through the regional papers, he now supplies the national and international newspapers and magazines with images from the biggest stories in the UK and abroad. He has participated in several group exhibitions and has also been published in a number of books.
Edmond’s main areas of interest are news, features, fashion, portraits and commercial photography. He has won four Kodak Press Awards, a M.I.L.K. award, the Prize of Prague and a Special Award from the Picture Editors' Awards. In 2006 he added to his list of awards by being named the British Press Awards Photographer of the Year and also winning third place in the Spot News category of World Press Photo.
His previous client list includes the biggest names in the industry, having regularly worked with Gamma, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Mirror, The Evening Standard and The Press Association. He is currently a London based stringer for Polaris Images, AP, The Times and TES.
He has also been on the committee of the BPPA (British Press Photographers' Association) for several years.
To see his work, visit www.pix.org.uk